C:Users:ZackAddy:Desktop:ClinicalDiary
by littlegreenweirdo123
Summary: After his release from the asylum, Zack finds that everything and everyone has changed, while he has not.  He does have a new love for Chocolate Chex, though  Follow in his clinical diary: Can he get his job back? Can he get a girl? And can he keep her?
1. September 24

**Yoo-hoo! It's me. I've almost completed Pourquoi Moi, and now I'm happy to start my newest project. It's been on my mind for quite some time. I'd like to introduce you all to Dr. Zack Addy's clinical diary.**

**It seems like a slow start, this chapter, but I hope that you'll have the patience to read on. And please, if you have a review, leave it. It's much easier to correct mistakes early on.**

* * *

_Saturday, September 24_

For the first time in my life, I am writing a diary. To be precise, it is a clinical diary, for Dr. Teng. She wants me to write it so that she can go over it during our weekly sessions. She thinks that it'll help me realize how my actions can impact others.

Of course, I have always known that my actions will impact others. We live in a causal world. If I knock a cup over, it will hit to floor and break. Unless it's plastic, but that's irrelevant in my example.

However, since Dr. Teng's instructions are part of my outpatient treatment, I suppose I must continue with my clinical diary.

My name is Zachary Uriah Addy. Most people call me Zack. I turn twenty-six years old this coming March, and I have just been released from the psychiatric hospital.

In the past two years, I have had 436 therapy sessions, four roommates, and six surgeries. The surgeries are mostly for my hands. They didn't look half bad after all the swelling from the skin grafts went down, but they do look like flesh-colored Play-doh was molded over a wire skeleton. Considering that they have looked worse, I suppose I must be grateful towards the plastic surgeons at Georgetown University Hospital.

I am sitting on the floor of my new apartment. Technically, it's mine, but Hodgins paid the down payment for the lease. He says I can pay him back later, when I get a job again. The apartment has one bedroom, a kitchen, one bathroom with a shower, one bathroom without a shower (I never quite understood why realtors like to say "one and a half baths". It is not half a bath, it is simply a bathroom with only a toilet and sink) a living area, and a smallish room that I suppose is for me do work in.

He and Angela also took my old furniture out of the self-storage for me, which was nice of them. Everything is fine, except for my old mattress, which smells like mold because of water damage. I will sleep on the sofa and buy a new one once I can pay for it.

They also stocked my kitchen for me, which was nice of them, too. It's all stuff that people eat to stay alive. All crackers, ramen, microwave dinners and peanut butter. There's a chunk missing from the Skippy because Angela had a craving for peanut butter and took a spoonful.

Oh yeah. Angela is pregnant now. She and Hodgins got married; they came to tell me at the psychiatric hospital the day after the ceremony.

I think I'll go to sleep now. Tomorrow morning I will connect the TV and hope that I get cable.

* * *

_Sunday, September 25_

I do have cable.

I watch Mythbusters on the Discovery Channel while I eat Ritz crackers for breakfast. Jamie and Adam are dropping an old Buick from a 125 foot tall crane to simulate a real life collision. They decide that the damage isn't too bad, but I know for fact that there are several variables that makes their experiment impractical for testing real-life situations:

The Buick is an old model, and therefore was held up to less rigorous safety standards. The damage may/may not be equivalent to what was seen.

The steel in the Buick's body has gone through considerable wear. No doubt it has softened and corroded with time.

They failed to account for the basic human instinct to attempt to swerve out of the way. Therefore it is a head-on collision, while most collisions do not impact the head of the car at 180 degrees exactly.

The Buick was dropped on concrete, which is harder than asphalt. Also, the amount of deceleration on the Buick is greater because the Buick is impacting the earth, which weighs approximately 25 quintillion tons. Even an emptied tractor trailer weighs about 30,000 pounds.

The Buick is pulled to earth by gravity, which means that it has a constant acceleration of 9.8 meters per second squared. This number is obviously flawed, as not only is acceleration in the average car either more of less than 9.8 meters per second squared depending on the driver, but acceleration is not constant in real life situations.

I have several other objections, but I suppose Dr. Teng doesn't care much for physics. Not many people do, which I find illogical. Everything is based on physics.

After breakfast I go downstairs to use the ATM. They have unfrozen my assets, but I still have to present three forms of identification before I can make any withdrawals. I walk for four blocks to find a Bank of America, and wait in line for 13 minutes so that I can put $250 in my wallet.

I go home and watch more TV. They have this new show on the SyFy channel called _Warehouse 13_. I like it, even though most of the artifacts are physically impossible. Even _Star Trek_ was good enough to bother trying to explain warp drive. (Fact: physically impossible. No object can travel faster than the speed of light. It is like trying to reach absolute zero.) Myka and Peter, from the show, remind me a little of Dr. Brennan and Agent Booth. I wonder how they are.

I have dinner and lunch together at the diner downstairs. The waitress pats me on the back as she brings me my pot roast. I think it's because I appear to be lost, or lonely. I feel that I am quite impervious to that notion, however.

I go home. Unpack a few boxes. Take a shower (note to self: buy shampoo), and curl up on my sofa to sleep.

Before I shut down my laptop, I must remind myself to wear something that exudes maturity tomorrow. It'll be Monday, and I have to go to work. My job is at the Jeffersonian, and they like to take themselves seriously there.

*_Please note that I have decided to write parts of my diary in the present tense. This is because I dislike the past tense. See, the past tense is used to tell a story of things that can no longer be altered truthfully. (unless we ever achieve time-travel, but I find that physically impossible. Wormholes pinch off in the center, for starters…)_

_The present tense does not lie. It states action. And that is why I choose to write of events in the present tense._

* * *

_Monday, September 26_

I don't have a job at the Jeffersonian.

More later. I feel that I cannot write at present.


	2. September 26

_September 26, Evening_

I do not have a job at the Jeffersonian anymore, as Dr. Saroyan has informed me.

Perhaps it is more convenient for you, Dr. Teng, to have me explain the events of this morning in greater detail:

I get up at 7:20, take a shower, eat breakfast (more Ritz Crackers). I also put on a green shirt. I take the Metro to the Jeffersonian, arriving at 8:23 exactly.

I swipe my ID card to get inside the doors, where three security guards man the X-ray scanners.

"Where's Bruce?" I ask the guard holding out a plastic tray for my keys and other metal objects.

"Doesn't work Mondays, kiddo. You must be new."

I almost open my mouth to retort that I have been working at the Jeffersonian for the last three years, save my two-year sabbatical at the psychiatric hospital. I decide not to, however. It is Monday morning, and people are typically quite irritable.

My ID card does not work the first time I swipe it at the Jeffersonian's Medico-Legal lab. This is not as unnatural as it seems, as the Medico-Legal lab has more stringent security standards than say, the Eqyptology department, so I do not feel that anything is abnormal.

I sense that something is wrong, however, when three burly guards arrest me.

They are heading towards the door with me in tow when Angela sees and stops them. Something about an angry pregnant woman seems to intimidate men greatly.

"Zack?" She asks, as if she does not recognize me. I am quite sure she does, however, since I saw her just two days ago.

"My ID card does not work anymore." I explain. "Perhaps I will visit Security later to get a new one."

"Oh, Zack." She sighs. "Let me get Cam."

Dr. Saroyan comes a few minutes later. She is wearing a transparent apron, and I think I see brains splattered on the fingers of her gloves.

"Zack?" She gesticulates to the security guards to let me go. "Why are you here?"

"I am always at the lab this early; sometimes I arrive even before Dr. Brennan." I explain. "I see that there is a newly deceased female on the gurney over there. Are you done with the flesh evidence so that I can macerate it?"

"Oh, Zack." She sighs, just like Angela. Dr. Saroyan peels off the gloves and scrubs her hands clean before motioning for me to follow her to her office.

"It's good to see you again, Zack." She leans across her desk to examine me. She eyes my hands, mostly. "The plastic surgeries went well, I see."

"Yes, Dr. Saroyan." The doctors had managed to restore much of their original function, though they say that my piano-playing days are over. This makes little sense to me, as I never played the piano in the first place. "I feel that I am more than ready to continue my job now."

"Zack, your job, it isn't here anymore." She says. "I've had my problems with interns, but I've managed to find a replacement—"

"You managed to replace me?" I squeak. "Dr. Saroyan, I hold two doctorates and am currently pursuing my third in applied mathe—"

"I know, Zack. But both the FBI and Jeffersonian can't hire someone with your…" She pauses as she thinks of an appropriate word. "…history anymore."

"I was acquitted, Cam!"

"But you were still an accessory, to the Gormogon." She says _Gormogon_ like it tastes bad in her mouth.

"Cam, you know that my expertise is best applied here, and it is consensus that I am your best—"

The door opens and a young man comes inside to hand Dr. Saroyan a file. He is black, with a shaven head. He wears a light blue shirt and walks with an obviously low center of gravity. "I've almost finished the skull reconstruction, I'm just sifting for a piece of jawbone." He informs her.

"Very good, Dr. Long. I'll tell Booth and Brennan."

"He is my replacement?" I ask Cam as soon as he leaves her office.

"Dr. Eugene Long is a very adept forensic anthropologist, Zack. He completed his Physics degree at Cambridge, and has a concentration in human ana—"

"But I am still your best scientist, Dr. Saroyan. Surely—"

"I can't rehire you, Zack." She says firmly. "Maybe you should go look around, somewhere. They could use you in Experimental Robotics, or you could try medical school…"

I stand up. There isn't much point in lingering where I've already been refused. "What kind of blast was it? The one that killed the victim." I point at the file in Dr. Saroyan's hands.

"Small airplane crash. Arlington, Virginia."

"I assume he was the pilot. In that case the jawbone should be with the rib units if not the rest of the skull. Gravity and the force of impact would have deposited it there." I dash my foot against the carpeting of Dr. Saroyan's office. I feel frustrated, like when I have knowledge of only one angle and the length of one side of an acute triangle and must find the other measurements.

"Thanks, Zack." She replies. I think she looks sad, or conflicted. It could be either, or both.

As I leave her office, I see Dr. Long using forceps to pick up pieces of bone and examine them under a magnifier. He is looking in the pile labeled "abdomen/ribs". I have to admit that he is quite adept.

I stop in Angela's office and let her give me a cup of tea while she sketches a victim. I make the educated guess that it is the young woman lying on the gurney in the center of the lab.

"Yeah," sighs Angela. She looks sad. "We think it's Angelica Hudson."

I do not know who Angelica Hudson was, so I thank Angela for the tea and take the Metro back my apartment.

I stop at the grocery store across the street and buy myself a box of Chocolate Chex and a half-gallon of 2% milk. I almost buy myself some Ritz Crackers and cheese, but I feel nauseous just thinking about it.

I sit on my sofa/bed and think about what I should do.

After a dinner of Chocolate Chex –which today tastes like cardboard, not cocoa— I decide to try medical school. Perhaps I will have a future in orthopedics. I call Georgetown and make an appointment to see the Dean of the School of Medicine. They tell me that I can have one in October, but I give my name as Dr. Addy and mention my two doctorates, and the secretary amends that she can slip me in for half an hour tomorrow.

Now I am lying on my sofa, waiting to fall asleep. In the meantime I try to have an existentialist debate with myself.

After ten minutes, I decide that I do not exist. The silence surrounding me affirms this.

* * *

_September 27_

I arrive at Georgetown's School of Medicine exactly ten minutes before my appointment with the Dean. I am lucky to be early, as it's quite difficult to navigate the administrative building's maze-like halls. There are polished bronze plaques on seemingly every surface. _"Donated by Mr. and Mrs. Weinberg", "In memory of Mrs. Jay Alter", "At the behest of David. D. Mason, Esq." _

I wonder if even the doorknobs were donated.

There is a line of wooden benches in the hallway, where people waiting to see the Dean sit outside his office. I take a seat between a girl that looks a little younger than me and a pharmaceuticals sales representative. I can tell because everything he has, from his briefcase to the pen in his pocket, has the Pfizer logo on it.

"Here about the med school, huh?" The girl next to me nudges me on the shoulder. I don't know if she was pretty or not, but I don't recall thinking of her as homely. She has dirty blonde hair with streaks of sunny blonde.

"Yes. You?"

"Trying to get my scholarship renewed." She shrugged. "The Physician's Fellowship hasn't gotten back to me yet, so I'm going to go see if Dr. Orley can put in a word for me."

"Oh. Good luck."

"Pardon me for saying, but you don't look like doctor material. You're more like the biological research kind of guy."

I'm a little surprised, because the part about being a doctor hadn't occurred to me. I just thought about the medical school part.

"Oooh, sorry. Maybe I'm wrong. I _always _say things to people that I shouldn't. I'm sorry, I—"

"No. You're right." I don't even know what I am doing. I just stand up and walk out of the administrative building.

As Agent Booth would say, I am a squint, and nothing but a squint.

* * *

_September 27, right before I go to sleep_

Something about what that girl said makes me decide, over Chocolate Chex, that I will go to the Jeffersonian and get my job back. I don't know how, but I will.

If Dr. Saroyan lets me be even an intern again, I will go back to Georgetown and thank the Girl From the Waiting Room.

PS. I suddenly remembered: her hair smelled like vanilla.

* * *

**So far so good? Let me know.**


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